ByLindsey Mather,Photography byClaire Weiss
PublishedMar 8, 2025 6:02 AM EST
We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs.
Domino Reno: Before + Afters, DIYs, and Advice From the Pros
Subscribe now to get our newsletter in your inbox.
By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to ourTerms of Useand acknowledge the data practices in ourPrivacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.
Living in a real-life dollhouse comes with obvious charms, as designer Hollie Velten-Lattrell describes her clients’ 1910 New Jersey Colonial. There is the storybook exterior—jade green shingles, red window trim, a generous porch—and, inside, a wealth of built-ins. But there is one drawback impossible to overlook: just as in the toy version, the rooms are genuinely small. So when homeowners Angela and Nick commissioned Velten-Lattrell to reimagine their en suite, she began with rigorous space-planning.
Both working in the music industry, the young couple are perpetually out at meetings and events, yet Angela loathed doing her makeup in the cramped bathroom, and the closet was no match for her wardrobe. “The primary bedroom should be a refuge,” Velten-Lattrell notes. “Angela spoke of wanting breakfast in bed on special mornings, of reading there at night—building new rituals in a space generous enough to hold them.”
Major structural changes would have solved the problem but shattered the budget, so Velten-Lattrell zeroed in on existing footprints where storage could be tucked. In the bedroom she seized on the window seat—the bench lifts open—and the bed frame, a platform style with integrated drawers. The bathroom gained two recessed wall niches: one inside the shower, one opposite the vanity.
Luxe materials soften all that newfound function: the window seat is clad in a whimsical floral print, the shelving in slatted wood and glossy zellige tile. “We looked to desert sunsets and the of-the-earth pigments found in terracotta, spices, clay, and agave,” Velten-Lattrell says of the palette—a quiet nod to the couple’s Palm Desert wedding.
Another way to control cost was simply to acquire less. “We try to do that often—use visual weight and the rhythms of pattern and print to fill a space, rather than just shop for a pile of things,” Velten-Lattrell explains. The corduroy headboard she sketched is twice the height of Angela and Nick’s previous one, with dramatic swooping curves. Flanked by oversized frosted glass sconces—1940s fixtures that stand an impressive 14 inches tall—there is no need for overhead art.
Nor will you find a mountain of throw pillows. “I approach a bed the way I approach a sofa—trying to un-decorate it, pulling back on all the easy tricks decorators lean on thinking we are adding personality when we are really just adding stuff,” Velten-Lattrell explains. The result is a floor-sweeping coverlet pulled all the way up to the headboard, 1950s style. “It reads like a big dress coat rather than a crazily over-accessorized outfit,” she says. And when Angela and Nick want a shift, they can toss the window-seat bolster onto the bed instead—Velten-Lattrell sized it to suit either scenario.
In the bathroom, the paring back was more literal. Velten-Lattrell walled off the sink nook—a move that technically shrank the room but delivered the symmetry needed to relocate the shower-tub beneath the window. The aim was to liberate that corner, carving space for a custom vanity twice the footprint of the original.
Terrazzo tile and Calacatta Viola marble in the bath? Four disparate patterns within one small bedroom? All entirely workable, promises Hollie Velten-Lattrell—provided you commit to a shared palette, vary the scale, and intentionally repeat a single detail to bind everything together. Here, the showstopping marble countertop reappears in the shower niche and again on the baseboards.
Back in the bedroom, both the window shade and headboard fabrics resurface on a pair of custom ottomans. Like many of the room’s accents, the seats pull double duty, visually anchoring the foot of the bed while offering a boost to reach the top of the closet. Even the couple’s beloved pup, Truffles, makes use of them: by night they serve as wildly chic canine stepstools.
Lindsey Mather is a proud words person who oversees Domino’s content strategy and creation. Whenever she can, she squeezes in time to write and edit stories about the ways people shape their spaces—and how their spaces shape them. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, Sam, and daughter, Stella.
Learn more about Domino.comEditorial Standards
